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The International Pane (10.3 Panther only) |
Note: This page applies to Mac OS X version 10.3 (Panther) only. If you are using a later version, please see a different page for up-to-date information.
Mac OS X uses one of the most advanced technologies to display the user interface in different languages. The operating system is multi-lingual, and there is only one worldwide version. The OS software is always identical, no matter in which country it is published, only the printed manuals are different.
However, there are some users that don't need a multi-lingual system. If you are using a preinstalled version of Mac OS X, or if Mac OS X was manually installed with default settings, all available language packages are stored on the hard disk, consuming space. You can remove unwanted language packages with TinkerTool System to reclaim this storage space. The same applies to third-party applications that were installed later: Because user-friendly applications are typically installed by a simple "drag and drop" operation in the Finder, there is no dialog which would ask what language support packages you want to omit. TinkerTool System can remove unwanted language packages in third-party applications as well.
To remove the support files for unwanted language packages, select all languages you want to delete in the list Languages to remove. Languages which are detected as having been installed during the initial system installation are printed in bold type. Note that your system may contain additional language packages in third-party applications. For example, you may have software installed that provides language support for Canadian English, although Mac OS X itself does not come with Canadian English support files. If you want to make sure that these third-party language support files are removed as well, you'll have to set the respective checkmarks although they aren't printed in bold.
If you press the button Select found languages, the languages in bold type will be selected automatically. You can also remove all checkmarks with the button Select none, or select all language packages with the button Select all.
Note that for technical reasons English language support can never be removed. The checkmark for the item English can be ignored.
TinkerTool System will only remove language support packages from one single volume or from one single folder and all included subfolders. To select the top folder where the tool should begin removing language packages, enter the name of the folder (or volume) in the Remove from folder or volume field. You can alternatively press the button […] to choose a folder from a list, or drag and drop a folder from the Finder into the field. Mac OS X identifies the system volume by the name "/".
If you like to remove certain language support files for the international user interfaces of applications but at the same time want to keep Mac OS X's linguistic dictionaries of the selected languages, make sure the checkmark Don't remove spell checker, speech and summary dictionaries is set. For example you could decide to delete all Esperanto user interfaces, but still might want to use the Esperanto spell checker. If you want to remove those dictionaries as well, uncheck the option.
The option Don't touch Adobe® applications can be used to exclude programs made by Adobe® Systems from any manipulation of language packages. Although TinkerTool System takes greatest to care to analyze which packages are needed and which are not, some specific versions of Adobe® applications contain automatic update and "self-heal" technologies which may consider the removal of language packages an "unauthorized manipulation". In this case, the update or self-heal features may no longer work as expected. If you want to make absolutely sure that the removal of language packages cannot conflict with any of Adobe's technologies, you can enable this option.
Mac OS X also contains PostScript® Printer Descriptions (PPD files) in several translated versions. For technical reasons, these files are not packaged in the usual way which Apple actually requires in the Software Design Guidelines for Mac OS X. TinkerTool System will regard the files as being normal data files which shouldn't be touched. If you enable the option Additionally remove translated PostScript® Printer Descriptions, all PPD files for the selected languages that have been installed into Mac OS X's default folders for printer support files, will be considered for deletion as well.
If the system adminstrator has installed additional PPD files next to Apple's official PostScript® support, s/he alone is responsible that translated versions have been placed in the correct language folders. For example, if the administrator has put a Spanish file into the French PPD folder and TinkerTool System is told to delete French PPD files, the misplaced Spanish PPD file will be considered a French file and will be removed.
TinkerTool System can additionally compute how much storage you will be saving when removing language support packages. To do this, set a checkmark for the option Compute storage reduction statistics. Note that the collection of the required data is complex, so this step will slow down the pre-processing phase significantly. The information will be displayed in the dialog panel which is opened before you can eventually decide whether to perform the deletion or not (see below).
To begin the search for language packages press the button Delete selected packages…. Note that the tool will start with an analysis of the language support files first, nothing is deleted immediately. Processing all language packages will take a while. You can abort this procedure with the STOP button.
After the pre-processing is complete, the number of language packages that will be deleted is shown. You can either press the Cancel button to prevent removal of language support files, or you press the Delete button to actually remove the language packages.
It is neither possible to remove the language of your current user session, nor the primary startup language of the operating system. If you like to remove this language (except English), you will have to make a different language your preferred language and startup language first. This is done as follows:
Warning to software developers: TinkerTool System tries to
only remove language support files that are part of Mac OS X bundles. Under
normal circumstances this will include compiled software packages but not isolated
lproj folders in source code directories. This means this feature will remove
language support files from built products but not from project sources.
However, there are circumstances in which your software development environment
may create project directory structures for your source files which
strongly resemble standard bundles. In this case, TinkerTool
System may no longer be capable of differentiating between built products and
source code, so localized project components of your source may be deleted.